O me, O my, you make the CE sigh

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Brendan McGrath is no longer the City Manager. The top man in City Hall is now known as a Chief Executive. Not to be confused with a Chief Executive Officer, or CEO, Brendan, formerly the city manager, is a CE, without the ‘O’.

Why they decided to drop the O is beyond us.

Maybe officer is too common for such a prestigious position.

Who knows but from now on there’s no O-in College Road.

Or should that be there’s no F-in-O in College Road, such was the annoyance and frustration the new title was causing.

That’s thanks to Minister Phil Hogan’s tinkering with local government reform.

City Councillors – bless them – are confused.

At the first ordinary meeting of the new City Council, elected member after elected member called him a CEO.

Mayor Donal Lyons (Ind) was blue in the face correcting them – “It’s CE not CEO,” he said too many times to keep count.

Cllr Oliver Crowe (FF) had particular difficulty with the CE-without-the-O name. He riled Donal no end.

But then Donal got confused himself and called the CE a CEO by mistake.

He wasn’t the only one. The former acting city manager – or should that be acting CE? – Joe O’Neill was giving a report to City Councillors about the Local Government Reform Act 2014.

Ironically, this was the very act that gave effect to the name change of City Manager to CE.

Except poor old Joe in his slide show even called the CE a CEO.

Independent Catherine Connolly is a traditionalist; and doesn’t like all this enterprise jargon to describe a role that is to serve the people of Galway.

She was calling him neither CE nor CEO.

“You’ll always be the City Manager to me,” was the gist of her spiel.

We reckon Catherine is among the large cohort of Galwegians that still calls UHG the Regional, NUIG remains UCG, and Brown Thomas is Moons.

Whether you refer to him as City Manager, CE, Chief Executive or CEO, we’re pretty sure the bould Brendan has been called worse.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.